Originally Posted by Anonymous
All the time they are discussions about high school players that either never pan out, or are the superstars they were expected to be. No one ever mentions the exponentially greater level of training, lifting, practice speed, film, and general level of “ professionalism” that goes along with college lacrosse! Kids from hotbed areas have had more training during ms and hs, yes, but those kids enter college with , in general, little what I call “spare capacity”. Soo maybe coaches like Spallina has a knack for spotting the girls who, maybe their parents didn’t throw down money for every single exposure opportunity, every chance to be set by IL contributors, for funding and grabbing the real diamonds in the rough. My guess is Amonte-Hiller has that same knack.
North, Scane, Gilbert, Hall and a few others all started relatively late (6th grade I think I read) never looked to see which of them had over of those storybook high school careers, but someone did their homework, chose not to after the low hanging fruit, and identified those with the biggest perceived room to grow at the college level. With the likes of IL and USAlax citing hs “superstars “ in the hotbeds, the real stars might be missed, and the soo called experts evaluations might more often than not be needed to be taken with a grain of salt.
Soo I think part of my point, kinda buried a little, is that how the girls do in college is every bit of if not more a reflection of how they adapted to the college level and intensity of training, not soo much what they speed up with on the first day of college practice

Somewhat incoherent. That said, All of the players that you mention were known to everyone while in HS, they were not diamond in the rough. In this day and age kids can get get good training just about everywhere but atr the end of the day, they player needs to put in the time and most importantly have the God given natural athletic ability.

I'm not exactly sure what the following even means

"Soo maybe coaches like Spallina has a knack for spotting the girls who, maybe their parents didn’t throw down money for every single exposure opportunity, every chance to be set by IL contributors, for funding and grabbing the real diamonds in the rough. "

I assume that you believe that if you spend the $$ you will be recognized by Inside lacrosse. Sorry, there are thousands of parents who spend thousands of dollars sending their kids to everything and they are never recognized. It's not about the $$ it's about the players ability. JS is a very good coach but he is not finding "diamonds in the rough" he is finding good players that pretty much everyone knows are good players.

It sounds to me like your daughter might not have been recognized by IL so you believe the evaluators got it wrong. Most of the players who have been recognized by the likes of IL and USA Lax have also been recognized by the best college programs because that is where the large majority of those players go to school.

By the way, pretty sure North, Scane were both recognized by the experts... no need to take their opinion with a grain of salt.

The real experts are the college coaches at the best college programs and they tend to agree with the people at IL, UA and USA Lax more times than not.

It's not very difficult to spot talented athletes, not too many slip through the cracks.